Barcelona's Intriguing Tale of 2 Goalkeepers

Image

Claudio Bravo making a save against Valencia in a recent La Liga match. Bravo has played every minute of Barcelona’s 36 matches this season in Spain’s domestic competition.CreditGustau Nacarino/Reuters

LONDON — No matter what happens in the coming week in Spain, where a strike by the players over the distribution of television money could prematurely end the domestic season, Barcelona looks likely to be champion.

Barça leads Real Madrid by four points with two games remaining. If the strike goes ahead, Barcelona has won La Liga. If it is called off, the Catalan team needs one more win to wrap up the title.

But the bigger picture is that both clubs are still striving to reach the Champions League final in Berlin on June 6. Barcelona, up 3-0 after the first leg against Bayern Munich, plays in Germany on Tuesday, while Madrid, down 2-1 to Juventus, will have home-field advantage in the Santiago Bernabéu on Wednesday.

For once, the tale of the teams’ goalkeepers might be more intriguing than the race between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo to be the top striker in Europe.

Messi and Ronaldo lead attacks that have both scored 107 goals in the Spanish league this season, but Barcelona’s defense has conceded just 19 goals, compared to the 34 that Madrid has let in.

Real captain Iker Casillas, the most experienced goalkeeper in Champions League history, is expected to be replaced after this season, regardless of the outcome of the Champions League. Casillas has played for 16 years and over 700 games as the club’s No.1 keeper, even though he endured a year when the previous manager, José Mourinho, confined him mostly to just playing in the cups.

Barcelona doesn’t have one keeper, but two. Claudio Bravo, the Chilean World Cup goalkeeper, has played every minute of the league matches this season. However, a rising German, Marc-André ter Stegen, has kept goal in all the Champions League games and in every round of the Copa del Rey, the Spanish Cup.

It pushes to new limits the growing custom that club managers adopt to keep two goalkeepers active throughout the season.

Victor Valdés, Barcelona’s longtime goalkeeper, chose to leave after last season, seeking a new challenge at Manchester United.

Barça purchased ter Stegen from his boyhood team, Borussia Mönchengladbach, and a few weeks later paid a similar amount, in the region of $13 million, for Bravo.

The man responsible for signing both players at Barça, Andoni Zubizarreta, was once a formidable goalkeeper himself. Last year Zubizarreta identified ter Stegen, then just 22, as Barcelona’s “goalkeeper for the next decade.” The inference was that Bravo, purchased from Real Sociedad, would be the backup.

Image

Marc André ter Stegen has a chance to reach the Champions League final before making his debut for Barcelona in La Liga.CreditJosep Lago/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Those roles reversed themselves during the off-season when a back injury kept out ter Stegen. It was then that Bravo took his chance. Continuing the fine form he exhibited at the World Cup, the 31-year-old has made himself undroppable, at least for the Spanish league.

Luis Enrique, Barcelona’s new head coach, resolved his choice of plenty by putting his younger keeper, ter Stegen, into the cup games. In the meantime, Zubizarreta resigned as sporting director, leaving the young German somewhat perplexed.

“I signed because of Zubi,” ter Stegen has publicly stated.

He was on his own now. Big and wonderfully athletic, he joined Mönchengladbach at the tender age of 4 and developed into the keeper that many regard as second in Germany only to Manuel Neuer, the commanding national team keeper who plays for Bayern Munich.

Ter Stegen has matured well, as his transition at Barcelona shows. He has swiftly learned a new language and adjusted to a new culture and style of play, all while facing a competitor who is at least his equal in Bravo. But still from time to time he has expressed his frustration at the situation.

There are specialist goalkeeper trainers and even a club psychologist for ter Stegen to talk to, but the question remains: With the defensive unit playing more cohesively than at any time in recent memory with the Chilean goalkeeper at the back, how could the head coach leave out Bravo?

So the unique situation has arisen. Barcelona is weeks away from potentially winning every competition on its calendar by playing alternating keepers in the different competitions.

It isn’t just ter Stegen and Bravo who have to make the best of it. Imagine what it is like for Javier Mascherano, Gerard Piqué and the other defenders who are having the most impressive seasons of their careers: training for hours and hours with one keeper, only then to have another at their backs during the game.

It is quite a change from when Pep Guardiola was in charge and the team swept all before it by relying mostly on Messi and his teammates to score on one end, while risking being open at the other.

Unless something changes, unless an injury intervenes for either man, Barcelona is likely now to go to the end of this season with Bravo in the domestic league and ter Stegen in the cups.

Physically, they are similar. Ter Stegen, at 6-foot-1, is the taller and heavier of the two men, but only a little so. Bravo is bold and brave by nature, a fine and agile improviser and very decisive in and around his box.

Ter Stegen has something of Neuer in his approach. He likes to clean out anything in the air and run off his goal line to set up counterattacks. He remains, however it is put, the understudy, the “cup keeper” who has the chance of going all the way in the Champions League without ever making his Spanish league debut.

Casillas, who captained Real Madrid to the Champions League crown last summer, could be one or two games from leaving his club. After 16 years, Madrid thinks it can do better, and Casillas, 33, is being mentioned as the potential Arsenal goalkeeper next season.